


A Whiff of Chives and Barbecue Sauce

by TheSaddleman



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Humor, No Angst, Slight spoiler for The Zygon Inversion, World Domination, did i say fluff, literal fluff, meat balls, space married, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:21:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26709709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaddleman/pseuds/TheSaddleman
Summary: By this time you'd think Clara would have learned not to leave the Doctor alone in her kitchen when she's making food for a school event. Oh well, at least it wasn't Play-Doh cookies this time, and the Doctor's claim that it stopped an invasion by a sentient food product was at least creative...
Relationships: Twelfth Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	A Whiff of Chives and Barbecue Sauce

**Author's Note:**

> I had bits and pieces of this story in a folder for about a year. I'll let you judge whether they should have stayed there. No angst here, just fluff.

Clara Oswald’s kitchen, 2 p.m. A Saturday. Its occupants enumerated as follows: 

1\. Clara Oswald, a young human schoolteacher. Age: no idea; lost track sometime after twenty-seven. 

2\. The Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. Age: twelve (mental age; real age, somewhere north of two thousand). 

“Doctor?” The young human schoolteacher asked with a chirpy Blackpool accent.

“Hmm?” The Time Lord replied (despite his origins, he spoke with a Scottish accent, though this was not easily detectable by him simply making a _Hmm?_ sound).

“Where are my meat balls?”

“What meat balls?”

“The ones I left on the counter. The ones I made for the school potluck tonight.”

“Never saw them.”

“You never saw them.”

“Nope. And nothing gets past these eagle-sharp eyes of mine.”

“Then explain to me why you have sauce on your lapel.”

“Sauce?”

“Yeah, sauce. Reddish-brown and probably with a whiff of chives and barbecue sauce.”

“Oh _those_ meat balls. I thought you meant some … other meat balls. I just saved your tiny planet from them. You’re welcome.”

“Saved the planet?”

“Yes. I was just sitting here minding my own business when they started to jump off the counter. I speak meat ball, you know, and I overheard the leader—Zandrazzi the Twenty-Third, by the way—order his followers to prepare to infiltrate the world’s food supply. They come from the fourth world orbiting Betelgeuse, you see, and the inhabitants of that planet are driven to invade and conquer and spread their DNA through the universe. So I overheard Zandrazzi the Twenty-Third giving these orders and you were in the other room doing whatever you do when I’m not around. I didn’t have many options, so I grabbed the only weapon I could find.”

“A fork?”

“And a very effective weapon it is, too. Humanoid digestive tracts are kryptonite to Betelgeusian Meat Ball Warriors. I did it to protect the world, Clara. I don’t require thanks. I live for this stuff, you know.”

“Doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Rule No. 1 may be, ‘The Doctor lies,’ but Rule No. 2 is, ‘The Doctor lies badly.’ Why don’t you just admit you were peckish? Why did you have to make up a silly story like that? Seriously, is that the best you could come up with? You pale in comparison to some of the tales my students spin when they try to explain why their assignment are late—and, trust me, they’ve moved far beyond, ‘The Daleks exterminated my homework,’ which was all the rage a few years ago.”

“But, Clara…”

“No buts, Doctor.” Clara sighed as she took a piece of paper and a pen and began scribbling notes. “Did you at least enjoy them?” She asked as she did so, not looking up from the paper.

“In a gastronomic sense, they were pleasurable. Much better than those cookies you made.”

“OK, one more time, those cookies were rounds of Play-Doh I made for another school project.” She stopped scribbling. “At least I’m glad you think my meat balls are good enough for world domination. But now you’re going to have to pay the piper. The Coal Hill Back to School staff potluck begins in three hours. You, my friend, are going to help me make up another batch, quickish. Here’s a list of the ingredients. I need you to hop down to Waitrose to pick them up for me and you’re buying this time, okay? Your payment for the ‘meal.’”

The Doctor took the scrap of paper from her. “But Clara, I was telling the truth.”

“Rule No. 1, Doctor.”

“I don’t always lie, Clara.”

“Tell me something that’s the truth, then.”

“Uh…uh…”

“Ah, see, not very easy, is it.”

“Uh… your eyes are very pretty today.”

“Really?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll take that. Waitrose, go.”

“Yes, boss,” the Doctor chuckled. 

Clara smiled as she watched the Doctor head out on his errand. She knew that, to an outsider, it must have looked like the ultimate in hubris, her ordering around one of the most powerful men in the universe (though no doubt some would punch the air at the thought). But it was all in fun, and the Doctor knew this—she had far too much respect for him to do so if he wasn’t totally fine with it. Even though at times his alien nature overrode his common sense, at least when it came to not eating everything that looked remotely interesting. 

That said, there was that earlier incarnation of his—the one who looked like Barty Crouch Jr.—who had the habit of licking walls, supposedly to determine atmospheric conditions, or something like that (Clara was too busy going _Ewww_ to hear everything Martha Jones was saying about the subject at the UNIT Christmas Party). So, all told, things could be worse. 

In any event, Clara really did need those meat balls to go to her fellow staff members and not into a Time Lord alien invasion-preventing digestive tract.

 _Sentient meat balls from Betelgeuse,_ she thought. _What does he think this is, an episode of_ Inside No. 9? She started to chuckle.

And then she saw it, sitting square on the middle of the cooking tray; a locale that she could have sworn was vacant a few moments earlier.

A single meat ball. Solitary. 

Slightly forlorn, if we’re being honest.

Clara stared at the food item. “Are you planning to take over the world?” she asked it. Upon hearing no reply, she said, “You better come clean. I’ll be sure you’re served with the best brand of spaghetti and sauce if you confess. None of that generic-brand stuff. That’s the best offer you’ll get before my ‘bad cop’ arrives back from the shop. So what will it be: invasion or pasta?”

The meat ball choose to exercise its right to remain silent. 

“Last chance, Madball.”

Nothing. Nada. No sale.

Shrugging, Clara opened the utensil drawer and withdrew a silver fork. “The Doctor’s not the only one who’s peckish,” she said to herself, licking her lips. “Come here y-”

Before Clara had a chance to say “-ou,” much less spear it with her fork, the meat ball spun itself off the tray and onto the floor, rolling towards the front door (leaving behind a faint trail of sauce and making it very evident that Clara had been lax in dusting her floor by the way it rapidly took on the appearance of a down-covered baby chick). Unfortunately for the meat ball, the door was closed; a fact it apparently realized a moment too late. Hitting the door at speed, it left a smudge of barbecue sauce and lint on the wood as it bounced off it like a high-tension rubber ball, narrowly missing Clara as it ricocheted off two more walls before angling itself towards her open window.

It fired through the opening into space before gravity won the battle and it started spiralling towards the ground, several storeys below. 

Unfortunately, what would otherwise have been an impressive escape for Zandrazzi the Twenty-Third, erstwhile invader of Planet Earth, came to an abrupt end when, upon landing on the sidewalk and bouncing three times, on the fourth bounce he was promptly caught and consumed by Smokey, a sheltie that lived with his eighty-five-year-old owner in a house a few blocks away, and who was out walking his master, as was his custom on an afternoon.

***

The Doctor returned a few minutes later. It was immediately evident from the packages in his arms (not to mention the speed of his return) that he did _not_ come back from Waitrose. 

“I felt bad about gobbling up your potluck, so I took the TARDIS over to a little place in Milan that makes the best meat balls in the world,” he said as the walked towards the kitchen. “I won’t tell Mr. Armitage if you don’t...” 

It was at this point where he noticed Clara was standing stock still in the middle of the kitchen, staring at her fork, then at a nearby open window and then back at her fork, which she then calmly placed in the sink.

“You know something, Doctor? Once upon a time, I might have thought days like today were pretty insane. But then I came to realize that it’s the days where weird stuff doesn’t happen that are the insane days. This is fine.”

“What happened?”

Clara told him. The Doctor shrugged and said, “No problem. I’ll just nip down and find that sheltie before he starts plotting an attack on Parliament.”

“Seriously? You’re not going to do anything nasty to Smokey, are you?”

“What, me? No, I’ll just have a chat with him and convince him that being man’s best friend-”

“Smokey’s owned by a woman, Doctor-“

“-human’s best friend is a more rewarding experience than trying to take over the world. I’ve been president of the Earth at least twice that I can remember, and it’s no fun. The hours are long and the pay sucks. And once you take over the world, what’s left to aspire to? Head janitor? Waste of time, if you ask me.”

“You should start a counselling service for diabolical masterminds. You can get Bonnie to give you a testimonial.”

“Yeah, I can start a reality TV show on the World Domination Channel, _Doctor Why-Bother?_ Back in a tick.” And with that, he was gone.

Clara took the box of genuine Italian meat balls out of its carry bag and started to reassemble her part of the potluck. But not before giving the box a good shake, just in case. 

“Yup, this is fine,” she said. “Just a normal Saturday.”

**Author's Note:**

> A few concordance notes:
> 
> Clara's students saying "The Daleks exterminated my homework" is based on the fact the existence of aliens and the Daleks is supposedly common knowledge on Earth following the events of The Stolen Earth/Journey's End (at least per The Waters of Mars). 
> 
> For more about Twelve's misadventure with the Play-Doh cookies, please see my story, imaginatively titled "Cookies."
> 
> I've referred to the Tenth Doctor as "Sandshoes" a number of times, so this time I decided to invoke the fact that David Tennant played Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (a movie that, coincidentally, opened in the UK the same night Tennant's first proper appearance as the Doctor in the 2005 Children in Need minisode was broadcast).
> 
> The reference to Inside No. 9 is a nod to Jenna Coleman appearing on that bizarre series in early 2020.
> 
> Madballs are a popular toy. In my mind's eye I pictured Zendrazzi as a Madball.
> 
> Smokey the Sheltie appears in honour of the dog I had when I was a teenager.


End file.
